WASHINGTON, D.C – A statue modeled on the “Goddess of Democracy” paraded during the bloody Tiananmen Square protests 18 years ago will be unveiled here Tuesday as a memorial to victims of communism worldwide.

The memorial, located near the Capitol Hill site of the US Congress, will pay homage to the “more than 100 million people” who have died under communism since Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Organizers hope for a crowd of about 1,000 including President George W. Bush, leaders of Congress, foreign diplomats and ethnic leaders.

Bush is due to speak at the dedication of the memorial, which evokes the papier-mache statue raised by pro-democracy demonstrators on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square before they were brutally silenced by Chinese troops in 1989.

Accusing the West of having a “moral blind spot” to communism, backers of the Washington memorial said: “We cannot allow the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro to fade into the background of history.”